Tommy Gabrini: The Grace Factor (14 page)

She sobbed in his arms.
 
She was a totally different woman now, but
her past was still her past.
 
“All of the
decisions I’ve made,” she said when her sobbing eased and she was able to look
at him again.
 
“I’ve made such awful
decisions!”

“You fell in love with the wrong man,
Grace,” Tommy said.
 
“That happens every
second of every day.
 
Don’t you beat
yourself up about that.”

“I fell in love with a monster,” she
said again.
 
“That’s worth at least one
lick, Tommy.”

Tommy smiled. Even at a time like
this, Grace still could make him smile.
 
“Not even one lick,” he said.

Then she smiled a smile that was more
sad than joyous.
 
“I kept the one I
should have thrown away,” she said, “and I threw away the one I should have
kept.”

Tommy smiled too.
 
But his smile was mixed with sadness.
 
They should have never parted.
 
Deep down, with truth serum, they both knew
it.
 
They stared into each other’s
eyes.
 
And their sad smiles turned into
an acute awareness.

Tommy placed both his hands on either
side of Grace’s pretty face.
 
He saw in
her all of the hurt and anguish and pain that embodied their relationship even
before their divorce.
 
Because they both
had grown so much.
 
Because they both
realized that the grass was never greener on the other side.
 
They both realized that everybody had
baggage, and none of it, not ever, was easy to carry.

But Tommy realized so much more.
 
His awareness was not just about their past,
but about their present.
 
He realized,
staring into Grace’s eyes, being totally alone with her for the first time
since their divorce, that that ache he still felt in the midnight hour, that
ache that would not quit even after all these years, had a cure.
 
It didn’t start until he left Grace.
 
It won’t end until she was back in his heart
again.
 
Grace, of all people, when all
people thought she was the least among them, was the cure.

He leaned down, and was about to kiss
her on her beautiful lips, but Grace flinched.
 
She pulled back.
 
And Tommy knew
why.
 
It was fear.
 
It was that debilitating fear of giving their
hearts again when it didn’t work the first time around.
 
Why in the world would they assume it could
work now?
 
Why in the world would they
risk it?

Tommy didn’t know why.
 
This was no intellectual exercise for
him.
 
All he knew was that he wanted
Grace.
 
Right here and right now.
 
He wanted his woman back!

And he leaned down again with no
resistance.
 
Because Grace wanted her man
back too.
 
They knew the timing was
awful.
 
They knew they both were
literally just getting out of relationships and were risking yet another
rebound affair.
 
This might be a terrible
mistake, and they knew it.
 
It was a
risk.
 
But it was also a risk they were
ready to take.

When Tommy’s lips met Grace’s lips,
and when Tommy’s hands moved around her neck as they opened their mouths, they
both knew they were about to fly.
 
Their
hearts were heavy, they might have been too fat to fly, but they were going to
take off anyway.
 
They wrapped their arms
around each other, and kissed with their lips, with their tongues, with their
teeth.
 
They moaned and groaned as they
kissed.
 
They moved their mouths in
sensual circles, as they kissed.

Grace hadn’t felt this good since
Tommy last kissed her this way all those years ago.
 
It had been so long it was obscene.
 
It had been so long she felt desperately in
lust with the man in front of her.
 
And
she pushed into him.
 
She clung to him as
he held her up, and kissed her even harder.

Tommy was desperate too.
 
He was desperate to feel that feeling he’d
only felt with Grace.
 
Liz was great in
bed, and so were many of his other ladies, but Grace was still his special
one.
 
She was still the one who made his
toes curl whenever he kissed her.
 
She
was still the one who made him forget every problem he’d ever had whenever he
held her.

And he lost control.
 
He hadn’t had this woman in so long, he
couldn’t wait another second.
 
Add to
that the fact he hadn’t been with a woman in months, and he wanted her even
more desperately.
 
He snatched her
panties completely off in cool Tommy fashion, sat her on the edge of the table,
and knelt down.

When his face was between her legs,
and he licked her, his heart began to pound.
 
She tasted oh so sweet to him, like vintage wine on the rim of his
glass, and he sucked it up.
 
He licked
her and sucked her until she was having spasms and nearly fell off the
table.
 
But that didn’t matter
either.
 
Tommy was holding her up.
 
He wrapped his arms around her waist and
mouth-fucked her until he was nearly ejaculating himself.
 
It happened before with Grace.
 
Not with any other woman.
 
But he came before while giving Grace
head.
 
That was what this woman did to
him.
 
That was what she was about to do
to him now, if he didn’t stop it.

He stopped it.
 
Grace’s entire body was clenched in sensual
delight when he stopped it.
 
A part of
her was very disappointed.
 
She was so near
an orgasm.
 
But when she saw the size of
his erection, and saw that look in his eyes that made clear he was going to
give her plenty of orgasms, she didn’t complain.

Tommy took her by the hand, she
grabbed her discarded panties in case Destiny came home and they were still
there, and he hurried her toward the stairs.
 
Grace’s heart was pounding with excitement as they hurried across the
living room.
 
Tommy was in charge.
 
Tommy was running this show.
 
She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Call your office,” Tommy ordered, as
he pulled her up the stairs.
 
“Tell them
you won’t be coming in today.”

Grace was stunned.
 
She knew he wanted to fuck.
 
She knew they were going to get down
mightily.
 
But surely it wasn’t going to
take hours upon hours.
 
“All day?” she
asked him.

Tommy looked back at her, and then
down at that body he was craving.
 
“All
day,” he responded, and pulled her faster.

And without any further comment,
Grace pulled out her cell phone, and made the call.

They were naked in his bed.
 
She was laying on her back, and he was lying on
his side.
 
He was feasting on her
breasts.
 
He remembered them.
 
He remembered those two brown mounds and
those two dark nipples.
 
His eyes were
hooded, where his eyelashes nearly covered his eyes, as he fondled her.
 
And when he leaned down, and covered a nipple
with his mouth, and sucked, Grace had an intake of breath that caused her to
shiver.
 
It felt that good.

And he couldn’t get enough of her
breasts.
 
He was feasting.
 
The mounds, the nipples, one and then the
other one.
 
Grace loved the way he was
squeezing and sucking her.
 
And then his
mouth moved up, to her mouth, and he pulled her in his arms as he kissed her.

For the longest time they held each
other and kissed.
 
It was the most
sensual experience for both of them.
 
Soon Tommy placed one finger and then two inside of her vagina, and his
fingering increased as their kisses grew more desperate.
 
By the time he pulled his fingers out, they
were saturated with her vaginal juices.
 
He licked it, and put it back in.

“You do it to me, Grace,” he said as
he kissed her cheek, her nose, and rubbed his lips against her lips.
 
“You do it to me!”
 

He kept fingering her, with two and
then three fingers, until it should have hurt.
 
But it didn’t.
 
“Oh, babe!” he
said.

And then he couldn’t delay any
longer. He couldn’t hold out any longer.
 
He moved on top of Grace, guided his fully erected penis inside of her,
and sighed as penis touched pussy after a long, long time apart.

Grace wrapped her arms around his
upper back, and her legs around his lower back, as she gave him full access to
her wet and ready womanhood.

“Feels good,” she said, as he fucked
her.

“Feels good?” Tommy asked her, as he
watched her.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly.
 
“Yes.
 
Nobody. Do. Me. Like. You, Tommy!
 
Oh, Tommy!
 
Oh, Tommy!”

He was banging her now.
 
The feelings were too intense and he was
putting it into the highest gear.

“The way you do me,” he kept saying.
“Oh, Grace.
 
Oh, baby!”

Tommy couldn’t believe how great it
felt to make love to Grace again.
 
It
felt as if he was coming home, when he had been away too long, but she made him
feel as if he had never been away at all.
 
He wrapped her in his arms, and fucked her so hard even the bedsprings
were screaming.
 
Tommy was right where he
wanted to be.

And when they came, they came together.
 
Grace began sliding her legs up and down
along his sweaty back as her orgasm had her in spasms.
 
Tommy’s cock was deep inside of her, hitting
her at the exact right spot over and over, making her tighten and pulsate and
throb.

“Give it to me, Grace,” he
cried.
 
“Give it to me!”

And he ejaculated inside of her,
squirting with a load that saturated her.
 
And he kept on fucking her.
 
He
couldn’t stop.
 
He felt so good that he
couldn’t even slow down.
 
They were
cumming together.
 
It had been so
long.
 
It was beyond wonderful now.

When Tommy finally stopped
moving.
 
When he finally pushed deep
inside of her and couldn’t push any more, he looked at her with eyes so loving
it warmed her heart.

“My baby,” Tommy said, staring
sincerely into her beautiful face.
 
“I
missed you so much.
 
My baby.”

And he kissed her with so much
passion all over again, that it momentarily took her breath away.

Afterwards, in each other’s arms,
they talked.
 
Some about Ed and how they
were going to break the news to Destiny, but mostly about their own
relationship and what this all meant.

“Where do we go from here?” Grace
asked him.
 
They were lying face to face.

Tommy stared at her.
 
“Where do you want it to go?”

Grace didn’t immediately respond.
 
Her eyes showed how carefully she was
thinking about his question.
 
Then she
looked into his eyes.
 
“I’m not sure,”
she responded honestly.
 
“It’s all
happening so fast.
 
Ed and I got into
that altercation.
 
I filed divorce
papers.
 
Now he’s dead.
 
And now this: I’m in bed with my
ex-husband.
 
I didn’t think I’d ever see
this day again.
 
It’s a lot to take in,
Tommy.”

Tommy could see the distress on her
pretty face.
 
And he nodded his head and
rubbed the side of her hair.
 
“I agree,”
he said.
 
“It’s a lot.”

But Grace continued to stare at
him.
 
To study him.
 
He seemed as anguished as she was.
 
“Where do you want this to go?” she asked
him.

“I want us to be together,” he
said.
 
“I want this to go somewhere.”

That was good enough for Grace
because her feelings were vague like that too, as if there was too much
background noise to focus on just one thing.

Tommy moved onto his back and he
moved her with him.
 
She laid her head on
his shoulder.
 
Time would tell where they
were headed.
 
Time would be the arbiter.
 
And before long, Grace fell asleep.
 
She fell asleep thinking about time, and
Tommy, and Ed, and Destiny, and how in the world would she ever know normal
again.
 
But she fell asleep.
 
She always felt protected whenever she was in
Tommy’s arms.

Tommy held her and watched her
sleep.
 
She used to be like a rose to
him, a fragile, sweet, vulnerable rose.
 
But he realized now that she wasn’t that girl anymore.
 
She had blossomed into a beautiful spruce
tree, or a pagoda: grounded, sturdy, but still with that sweet vulnerability,
that fragileness, that made her need him.
 
And that was what Tommy was after.
 
When he saw Liz in Syria, he felt like an intruder.
 
He felt as if he was intruding into her
world.
 
When he saw Grace at Destiny’s
birthday party, he felt welcomed.
 
He
felt as if she was welcoming him, as if she was inviting him, into her world.

He believed that was why he chose
Grace their first time around.
 
That was
why he placed Grace above all the women he could have married.
 
It wasn’t something he was proud of, but he
had a reputation as the player among players back in the day, and his
reputation was true.
 
He had days where
he would fuck one woman in the morning, another one in the afternoon, and a
different one that night.
 
And later that
night, when he was alone, he would still want a woman.

Then he met Grace.

Grace wasn’t an experienced lover
back then, although, he thought with a wry smile, she was well-experienced
now.
 
He had taught her well.
 
But what separated her then, and what he still
loved about her now, was the way she made him feel.
 
Not just sexually, although she made him feel
fantastic sexually.
 
But whenever he held
her in his arms, as he was holding her now, she made him feel as if he was
home.
 
His father abused him.
 
His mother neglected him.
 
He had no home in his youth.
 
He tried to create one on his own, but until
Grace and Destiny came along it was just a big, fancy house to him.
 
It was just a place, but not a shelter.

He gathered Grace tighter into his
arms.
 
She stirred but continued to
sleep.
 
He smiled because she slept with
a puckered mouth, as if, even in her sleep, she was putting her all into
it.
 
She always slept so peacefully,
Tommy realized, when he held her.
 
Maybe
she felt at home with him too.
 
And there
was no place like home.

But Tommy was never just a feeling
man.
 
He was also a thinking man.
 
And he knew he had to take this slow.
 
He was not going to rush her, or rush into
this himself.
 
The biggest mistake he
felt he made in their marriage was not realizing early on the dramatic change
in lifestyle Grace would undergo as his wife.
 
He threw her out to ride the waves and she nearly drowned in the
undertow.
 
Even now, as they were in bed
together, upheaval was in the background.
 
Their daughter no longer had the man she called her stepfather.
 
That stepfather was scum, but they still had
to tell her that she would never see him again.
 
Upheaval.

And although Tommy saw a definite
change in Grace, and although he felt unlike he had ever felt before that she could
handle the drama now, he was not taking any chances.
 
They were going to take this slow.
 
For her sake, he thought, as he held her even
tighter, and for the sake of his own heart.